Schools on Alert!

Post by CJN

Arena Union Elementary in California

On March 28, 2017, the president wrote his big Sharpie signature on another executive order to dismantle the Clean Power Plan and the progress our country was making to avert catastrophic climate change. As Take Care Schools has said before (if you’re too young, ask your parents), do you want your school age child to go back to a hacking cough because of “smog” in the air at recess or feel the brown haze burning her eyes?

That’s not all. This week the president has approved H.J. Resolution 57, which nullifies the Department of Education’s rule relating to state accountability requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act and H.J. Resolution 58, which nullifies the DOE’s rule relating to assessing the quality of teacher preparation programs.

These are the first actions aligned to the president’s FY2018 budget proposal, with line items to take down public education in favor of a privatized market place of “schools of choice.” Be assured, the impact of these budget cuts will affect most the black and brown students and their community schools.

A cut of $9 billion (13.5%) for the Department of Education, including teacher training and funding to reduce class sizes.

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program is eliminated. This is the program ($1.2 billion) that funds before-and after-care programs, summer programs, and funding for sustainable community schools

$1.4 billion more for privatization programs, including:

$168 million increase for the federal Charter Schools Program

$250 million for a “new private school choice program”

$1 billion to encourage districts to adopt “portability” systems where per pupil funding follows students – often to charters funded in the Title I program.

Although there is a long process ahead to turn these proposals into legislation, in Take Care Schools’ opinion, this anti-public education agenda is wrong for students and taxpayers.

Let’s look at another view about the $168 million to expand charter schools. David W. Hornbeck reminds us that charters are not substitutes for broader proven reforms. In fact, chartering is not an education reform. It’s merely a change in governance. A charter law doesn’t deal with the hard and often costly slog of real reform.

Hornbeck asserts that from research and experience it is clear what works to build schools with thriving students. Keep your eye on the prize:

High standards

Quality teachers

Prekindergarten for 3-year-olds

Lower class sizes through the third grade

Attacking concentrated poverty through such innovations as Family Resource and Youth Service Centers.

In addition, possible legislative outcomes if the president gets his way include changes to nutritional programs and services to disabled students.

The federal government currently provides California schools, for example, with $2.6 billion for child nutritional programs in 2017 through the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program. During the same year, the state Legislature has spent $161 million to supplement school meal funding, according to the non-partisan Legislative Analyst. These funds will continue through a “continuing resolution” but next year …? How will your state’s nutritional programs survive?

As far as disabled students, educators also have to take in account the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has erected technical legal barriers against the legal claims of students with disabilities — barriers of the type that the Supreme Court has subsequently rejected unanimously. He has repeatedly ruled that students with disabilities are owed only a bare minimum of education, contradicted in SCOTUS decision on March 22, 2017. Judge Gorsuch has joined deeply troubling opinions that hold the constitutional rights of students with disabilities are not violated even when they are segregated and subjected to abusive confinement.